Red Light newsletter 🏒 | This is The Athletic’s hockey newsletter. Sign up here to receive Red Light directly in your inbox.Good morning to everyone except anyone who has dreams in their head and they won’t go. If you’re American and don’t understand the reference, consider yourself lucky.One conference final is heating up and the other might end tonight, so let’s get into it.Connor McDavid. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)Ultimate loser raceThe identity of the “ultimate loser” is one of my favorite postseason subplots. And this year, we might get an especially juicy one.If you’re new to the concept, the ultimate loser is the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that loses to the team that loses to the Stanley Cup champion. Yes, that seems like too many “loses,” but it adds up.The appeal here is simple. While every playoff loss is disappointing, some are worse than others. If you lose to a team that goes on to win the Cup, well, at least you lost to the best. And in fact, if you lose to the eventual champs, you could even convince yourself that your team was the second-best in the league, and just happened to run into the one team that was a little bit better. You were close, in other words.But if you’re the ultimate loser? Forget it. You literally can’t end up any further from a Cup than ultimate loser status. There’s just no way to spin your postseason into a positive when the cards fall like that.With four teams in the conference finals, we’re down to four candidates for this year’s ultimate loser crown. The two Eastern contenders are the Boston Bruins (who lost to the Sabres, who lost to the Habs) and the Pittsburgh Penguins (who lost to the Flyers, who lost to the Hurricanes). It’s nice to see the Penguins back in the running after their historic near-miss a few years ago, but otherwise neither of these teams would be an especially interesting ultimate loser. Neither was expected to make the playoffs at all, so falling far short of the Cup wouldn’t exactly be a stunning result.But out west, it gets interesting. One of the candidates there is the Dallas Stars, who lost to the Wild, who lost to the Avalanche. The Stars had the third-best record in the league during the season and were clearly all-in on a championship after firing coach Pete DeBoer for the sin of winning only two rounds a year. On the surface, they seem to be a team that’s right there, maybe just a bounce or two away from finally winning it all. If they end up as this year’s ultimate loser, do you have to re-evaluate? What if they’re further away than we thought?That question looms even larger with our final team, the one that lost to the Ducks, who lost to the Knights. Yes, it’s the Edmonton Oilers, the team that came into this year’s postseason facing more pressure than anyone.With Vegas leading Colorado, the Oilers are on the verge of narrowly avoiding ultimate loser honors in what was supposed to be a make-or-break season.Andrei Svechnikov. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)While You Were SleepingHurricanes 3, Canadiens 2 (OT)Look, folks, the hockey gods aren’t always going to be able to churn out new scripts for every game. So, last night, we got an early-summer rerun, as Game 3 looked a lot like Game 2.The Hurricanes dominated the shot clock and led 2-1 for a long stretch. The Canadiens hung around, largely thanks to goaltender Jakub Dobeš. The game went to overtime, where one of Carolina’s top scorers came through with the winner in a 3-2 final.Here’s that winner, courtesy of Andrei Svechnikov:The Hurricanes are now up 2-1 in the series, running their postseason record to an impressive 10-1 overall.